South Korea

NOVANEWS By KIM TONG-HYUNG and FOSTER KLUG This undated photo shows the Brothers Home compound in Busan, South Korea. An Associated Press... Read more BUSAN, South Korea (AP) — The 14-year-old boy in the black school jacket stared at his sneakers, his heart pounding, as the policeman accused him of stealing a piece of bread. Even now, more than 30 years later, Choi Seung-woo weeps when he describes all that happened next. The policeman yanked down the boy's pants and sparked a cigarette lighter near Choi's genitals until he confessed to a crime he didn't commit. Then two men with clubs came and dragged Choi off to the Brothers Home, a mountainside institution where some of the worst human rights atrocities in modern South Korean history took place. A guard in Cho...

NOVANEWS By Konstantin Asmolov  On July 15 2015, the police of the Republic of Korea in Seoul raided the office and residence of members of the civil movement, “Korean Alliance”, (in Korea – the association for independent reunification and the development of democracy), who advocate the expansion of ties with the DPRK. This organization was created in November 2011 to implement the independent reunification of the two Koreas without external influence. It demands the withdrawal of foreign troops (read – the US, because there are no others) from the Korean peninsula and advocates the abolition of the National Security Law (NSL), which (among other things) prohibits citizens of the Republic of Korea, any unauthorized contact with North Koreans and actions to support the DPRK. According to ...

NOVANEWS Sputnik  Seoul's Defense Ministry dismissed reports on the current size of North Korea's nuclear stockpile and its capability to produce miniaturized nuclear warheads as a 'presumption without any evidence', amid ongoing hysteria generated by US experts. Ekaterina Blinova – South Korea's Defense Ministry expressed doubts regarding Pyongyang's ability to create miniaturized nuclear warheads which would fit  the state's ballistic missiles anytime soon, and denounced the ongoing hysteria surrounding North Korea's nuclear program as a 'presumption without any evidence.' Seoul's Defense Ministry statement has come as a response to a report released by the US-Korea Institute Tuesday. American and South Korean experts proposed three scenarios for Pyongyang's nuclear development program,...

NOVANEWS Sony Hack: Made in America? by PETER LEE Next time Brian Williams or his carefully-coiffed successor assigns blame to some foreign actor for a cyberoutrage, I expect the “Cyber Threats Intelligence Integration Center” to figure prominently in the coverage. According to AP (actually, according to AP’s Ken Dilanian, the notoriously obliging amanuensis  to the US security establishment ): White House cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel has concluded that cyberintelligence at the moment is bedeviled by the same shortcomings that afflicted terrorism intelligence before 9/11 — bureaucracy, competing interests, and no streamlined way to combine analysis from various agencies, the official said. The hack on Sony’s movie subsidiary, for example, resulted in a variety of different ...

NOVANEWS The Dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party and the Incarceration of Lee Seok-ki By Hyun Lee Disqualified Unified Progressive Party National Assembly representatives. From left to right: Kim Mi-hee, Oh Byung-yun, Lee Sang-kyu, Kim Jae-yeon. Source: Voice of People. This article is reposted from The Asia-Pacific Journal: Hyun Lee, “The Erosion of Democracy in South Korea: The Dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party and the Incarceration of Lee Seok-ki”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 52, No. 5, December 29, 2014. On December 19, 2014, South Korea’s Constitutional Court delivered an unprecedented ruling to dissolve the opposition Unified Progressive Party and disqualify all five of its representatives from the National Assembly. The ruling was in respons...

NOVANEWS By Gregory Elich "With each passing week, mass demonstrations in downtown Seoul swelled ever larger in size, denouncing the NIS for its interference in the electoral process." On December 19, the South Korean Constitutional Court delivered a devastating blow against the progressive movement when it disbanded theUnified Progressive Party (UPP) with immediate effect. That act came as the culmination of a long campaign by South Korean President Park Geun-hye to shackle the labor movement and smash political opposition. The Constitutional Court case was initiated over a year ago when the Ministry of Justice filed a petition with the court to ban the UPP.  The pretext for the petition was the arrest of six prominent members of the UPP on the charge of plotting a rebellion to ...

NOVANEWS By Global Research News Global Research Global Research, Montreal, December 18, 2014 PRESS RELEASE A path breaking decision which will have far reaching impacts on civil and political rights in the Republic of Korea (ROK) is forthcoming. A decision from the Constitutional Court in South Korea regarding the dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) is imminent. On November 5, 2013, the South Korean government requested that the Korean Constitutional Court initiate dissolution proceedings against the Unified Progressive Party (UPP), the third largest political party in Korea, following the arrest of one if its members, the parliamentarian Lee Seok-Ki. Representative Lee (image right) was accused (allegedly on trumped up charges) and later convicted of violating Sout...